


Leave

by Dee_Laundry



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Gen, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-16
Updated: 2009-02-16
Packaged: 2017-10-15 15:35:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/162299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dee_Laundry/pseuds/Dee_Laundry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What strange hand of fate decreed that a department head and Board member could get eight full weeks of bereavement leave, Wilson will never know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leave

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place between Season Four and Season Five. Spoilers through episode 5-1. Thank you to [](http://daisylily.livejournal.com/profile)[**daisylily**](http://daisylily.livejournal.com/) for beta and Early Readers for support.

Wilson lies on top of the extra-long twin bed ignoring the ancient Steiff bear poking him in the back and the “AV” carved over and over again in the light fixture, in the room that smells of pride and disuse and root beer Bonnie Bell Lip Smackers, and wonders what House would say about this.

Then he wonders why it matters.

Then he falls asleep.

* * *

The Volakis family is very nice to him, but none of them ever looks at him. At first, he felt guilty about this, because surely they blamed him for their daughter’s death. Why wouldn’t they? Really, honestly, he can’t think of a reason why they wouldn’t.

But then Peter said something and Eleni said something else and Yaya Em cried into his shirt, and now he knows that by some odd miracle they don’t blame him. For her death. Yaya Em’s peeved that he never gave Amber any children before she died, so he’s got effective birth control to feel guilty about, but not Amber’s death.

They still won’t really look at him, though. It must be a family thing. He didn’t put a ring on Amber’s finger so he’s not really family. That’s why they won’t look at him, even as they’re all embracing him in giant bear hugs and kissing his cheeks and bundling him up even though it’s almost eighty outside and making sure he has enough (way too much) food for the trip home. Not family, that’s why.

He sleeps under his father and mother’s roof for two nights before he realizes they don’t look at him either.

He had learned how not to be seen.

* * *

House has always had a blast hassling Wilson about his divorces (plural), but never teases him about the failed engagements, which are even more plural than the divorces. Wilson doesn’t know why. He teased Wilson at the time of each breakup, of course, but he never seems to bring them up after.

It’s a mystery, but Wilson never thought about it much. The only reason he’s thinking about it now is that he’s back in his own place (even though all the things in here that are his, outside the kitchen and the closet, could fit into an accordion folder) and he’s got a small Moleskine notebook in his hands.

It had been the idea of the counselor he saw with Kim, back when he was hoping to salvage his reception deposit. Doctor Danny recommended a Recognition Journal. “Don’t just guess! Chart your progress in acknowledging your faults and supporting your partner.”

He and Kim broke up three weeks later, and the Pegler Westbrook Inn kept his money.

In the eleven years since, Wilson has apologized to House 742 times. Fifty of those were in the first three months or so, until House yelled at him to quit being a toady; 73 were in the two months right after the infarction, until House yelled at him to shut up with the pity crap; 619 were spaced out over the rest of the ten-plus years. Those 619 haven’t made much of an impression, Wilson assumes, given that House never says anything back like, “OK,” or “It’s all right,” or even “Stuff your sorry apologia,” but Wilson keeps going because it’s what he knows how to do.

Over the same time, House has apologized to Wilson ten times. He said, “I’m sorry,” one additional time, during the DBS procedure, and Wilson has tried to make that an apology, but try as he did, he couldn’t find anything to apologize for in House’s medical treatment of Amber so that has to be a condolence.

Wilson has thanked House 1,371 times.

House has thanked Wilson 82 times. Wilson has a vague recollection that some of those may have had a slightly sarcastic tone, but he still considers them valid.

The “I love you” count stands at one each: Wilson sloppy, sloppy drunk, right before he fell down that huge flight of stairs to the amusement of House and the consternation of his fiancée (Johanna, that time); House in blistering pain (literally) and giddy with anticipation of more drugs.

The laughs aren’t in the book, and Wilson wishes now that they were. House is ahead on that, always ahead from the day they met, no matter how hard Wilson tries to catch up. It’s a difficult thing, to make Greg House laugh. Wilson has felt a buoyant, preening pride every time he’s managed it.

* * *

Two weekends before he’s due back at the hospital (and what strange hand of fate decreed that a department head and Board member could get eight full weeks of bereavement leave, Wilson will never know), Wilson sees something ridiculous on TV. What springs to mind is a rejoinder that only someone familiar with existentialism, classic Japanese literature, and the ’64 Mets would get, and Wilson has dialed six digits of House’s number before he realizes his mistake.

House isn’t speaking to him. Or maybe he’s not supposed to be speaking to House. Either way, they are _incommunicado_ , strict radio silence since the night Amber died. Wilson was listening to Amber’s mother cry, and the line beeped, and Wilson slipped to the other line with a thousand justifications and a “Damn, this phone has always been a problem” excuse at the ready.

“Wilson,” House said – and he _slurred_. Not much. The “L” was slightly unrealized, with a small drag from the L to the S. Not much at all, the physician side of Wilson’s mind pointed out, for a man who’d just spent two days playing handball with his brain, going into overtime on a desperate friend’s plea. Completely understandable.

 _Drunk_ , screamed Wilson’s amygdalae, and his chest clenched, and he ground out, “I can’t do this now, House.” The line died; Wilson switched back to Amber’s mother’s tears.

House hasn’t called again. The first week Wilson was alternately too busy with arrangements and too sunk in grief to call House. The second week it would’ve been impolite to Amber’s parents to take his attention off them. The third week there was some other excuse that amounted to Wilson waiting for House to be the one to call, the one to make the overture, which would prove... something. He can’t remember what any more.

Since then, Wilson’s been kept from calling by feeling alternately spiteful, grief-stricken, resigned, angry, hopeful, rejected, blasé, tired, frustrated, annoyed, agitated, exasperated, tired, tired, tired.

In grieving Amber, the steps of grief have come like clockwork. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression... and he has to think that acceptance will come one day.

In grieving his relationship with House, the steps have been cockeyed, in any damn order they please, with previously felt stages popping up again at unpredictable intervals, completely ruining any sense of progress Wilson had felt, demanding his attention now, now, NOW.

Wilson doesn’t like it but finds it entirely fitting.

* * *

There’s a cut on his skin that won’t stop bleeding. It’s on a soft patch of skin high on his left inner thigh, and it’s very small, a couple of millimeters, but it just won’t clot.

It was a careless accident, the cut, a tiny slip of the scissors during a perfectly normal and not at all vain grooming (shut up, _shut up_ ), and the jewel-like welling startled him. He caught the blood before it rolled too far, and pressed a square of tissue to the cut, thinking it’d be a minute and then be done. It didn’t even hurt, really. Only, when he pulled the tissue away there was a momentary searing and the red welled up again, stark against his pale, pale thigh.

He put a circle Band-aid on it (right tool for the right job, no sense creating waste by being excessive) and forgot about it. But ten minutes later in the shower, he was looking at his feet and noticed a pale pinkish drop hit the tub.

There were faint streaks on his thigh: the circle Band-aid had been inadequate for the job. It was full, overflowing.

The large Band-aid worked, though. Worked fine. He was confident when he took it off a few hours later, that the problem was solved.

Now it’s three days later, the morning he goes back to work, and there’s a dark spot in the middle of the latest Band-aid.

He has to get out of here. He’s never going to be happy here. He has to go somewhere else, where he can be somebody else. Start fresh, do it right from the goddamn beginning, _be_ right from the beginning, avoid bad influences that twist him all around until every move he makes is wrong.

He’s been living in a funhouse hall of mirrors for years, and he doesn’t even know which reflection is him any more.

Now he just has to figure out how to tell House he's leaving.


End file.
